TOMB - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

TOMBAuthored

The Law Mind • 957 words

Definition

A tomb is a structure or enclosure for the reception and preservation of human remains. The term encompasses a range of physical forms — from a simple grave or pit in the earth to an elaborate above-ground vault, mausoleum chamber, or sepulchral monument. In legal contexts, the word carries significance primarily in property law, burial rights, and the law of sepulture, where the rights to use, maintain, and control burial structures are treated as a form of quasi-property interest. A tomb may refer to:

The physical structure itself — a vault, chamber, or monument erected over or around human remains.
The burial site or grave — used interchangeably with "grave" or "sepulcher" in older statutes and common law authorities.
A monument or memorial marker — a structure erected to preserve the memory of the deceased, which may or may not contain remains.

Common Language

Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A small building or room, with walls, roof, and sometimes a door, for the remains of the dead. May be wholly or partly underground, within a cemetery or church, and may be sealed permanently or designed for repeated access by a family group.

Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A pit or grave for the dead; a house or vault formed in the earth with walls and roof for reception of the dead; or a monument erected to enclose the body and preserve the name and memory of the deceased.

The common meaning is relatively stable and aligns broadly with legal usage, but the legal significance of the term lies not in its physical description but in what rights attach to it. Common usage treats a tomb as a structure; law treats it as the locus of enforceable interests — in access, maintenance, perpetuity of use, and freedom from desecration or interference. A layperson may think of a tomb as merely an architectural fact; a legal researcher must consider it as the subject of property, contract, and criminal law.

Common Confusion

Tomb, grave, sepulcher, and burial place are often used interchangeably in both statutes and judicial opinions, creating interpretive difficulties. Historically, "sepulcher" carried a more formal or elevated connotation and appears more frequently in ecclesiastical and common law sources. "Grave" typically refers to an in-ground interment without a superstructure. "Tomb" in strict usage implies a constructed enclosure or monument, but courts and legislatures have rarely enforced these distinctions consistently. Researchers should not assume that a statutory reference to one of these terms excludes the others without examining the definitional provisions or the jurisdictional common law backdrop.

Why It Matters in Research

Tomb appears in the Law Mind corpus primarily as a gateway term — Anderson's own entry redirects to BURIAL and SEPULCHER, signaling that the substantive legal doctrine is organized elsewhere. Researchers who search only for "tomb" in historical sources will miss the bulk of relevant material, which clusters under sepulcher, burial rights, church law, and the law of the dead.

The property law questions that surround tombs evolved significantly between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Early common law treated burial rights as ecclesiastical matters under church jurisdiction; as secular property law displaced church authority, rights in burial structures migrated into equity and then into statutory frameworks. This transition is incompletely documented in historical legal dictionaries, which tend to treat sepulture law as settled and peripheral.

Tombstone appears separately in Anderson as a reference to hearsay — a historically important evidentiary category. Inscriptions on tombstones were treated as a recognized exception to the hearsay rule for proof of pedigree and family history. Researchers encountering "tombstone" in evidentiary contexts should pursue HEARSAY and PEDIGREE entries rather than treating it as merely a physical description.

Jurisdictional variation matters here. Rights in tombs — including rights to access, to prevent disinterment, to enforce perpetual care obligations, and to recover for desecration — differ substantially between states and between civil law and common law jurisdictions. Historical sources reflect English ecclesiastical law assumptions that do not translate directly into American state law.

Historical Dictionary Support

Anderson's Dictionary of Law (1889) does not define tomb independently, directing the reader to BURIAL and SEPULCHER — a deliberate organizational choice that reflects how nineteenth-century legal dictionaries treated sepulture law. The doctrine was considered sufficiently unified under those headings that a separate "tomb" entry was unnecessary. This is useful navigational information: it tells the researcher where the analytical weight sat in that period.

Webster's 1913 provides three distinct senses — grave, vault, and monument — that map onto the three legal sub-definitions above, suggesting the common and legal vocabularies were largely aligned in that era. The monument sense (a structure preserving memory rather than necessarily enclosing remains) is the one most likely to generate legal ambiguity, particularly in disputes over what constitutes a protected burial site for purposes of preservation statutes or criminal desecration laws.

Historical sources are notably thin on the property dimensions of family tomb ownership, the effect of cemetery incorporation on pre-existing tomb rights, and the intersection of tomb rights with municipal regulation. Researchers should not expect historical dictionaries to resolve these questions.

Jurisdictional Note

In American law, rights in tombs are primarily creatures of state statute and common law, with substantial variation in how states treat perpetual care obligations, rights of access for family members, and remedies for desecration. Some states have specific criminal statutes protecting tombs and burial structures; others address desecration only through general property or public health frameworks.

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

See Law Mind Encyclopedia: BURIAL RIGHTS; SEPULTURE; HEARSAY (Pedigree Exception).

TOMBmain

Anderson's Dictionary of Law • 1890

See BURIAL; SEPULCHER. Tombstone. See HEARSAY. ΤΟΝ. In weight: sometimes two thousand pounds avoirdupois; sometimes two thousand two hundred pounds.6 In measurement: forty cubic feet.7 Tonnage. (1) A custom or impost paid to the king for merchandise carried out or brought in in ships, or such like vessels, according to a certain rate upon every ton. (2) In our law, "internal cubical capacity in tons of one thousand cubic feet each." 8 In commercial designation, the number of tons burden a ship or vessel will carry, as ascertained by official admeasurement and computation prescribed by public authority.9 Tonnage tax. A tax or duty on tonnage;1 a duty levied on a vessel according to its tonnage or capacity.2 A tonnage tax is imposed, whatever the subject, solely according to the rule of weight, either as to capacity to carry or as to the actual weight of the thing itself.3 The registered tonnage of vessels is ascertained by rules provided by acts of Congress; otherwise, reg istered tonnage would be a variable quantity, dependent upon State statutes or local usages. "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage." s Taxes levied, as on property, by a State, upon vessels owned by its citizens, and based upon a valuation of the same, are not prohibited. But taxes cannot be imposed "at so much per ton of the registered tonnage." 1 It is not only a pro rata tax which is prohibited, but any duty on a ship, whether a fixed sum upon its whole tonnage, or a sum ascertained by comparing the amount of tonnage with the rate of duty. For the use of wharves, piers, and similar structures a reasonable compensation may be charged to each vessel, care being taken not to cover a violation of the foregoing prohibition. A tax for the privilege of arriving, stopping, or departing is unconstitutional.' A tax upon a boat as an instrument of navigation, and not as a tax upon the property of a citizen of the State, is invalid.2 A State, as a police regulation, may impose a license tax, directly or indirectly, upon the business of keeping ferries between landings in different States. Such exaction is not a duty of tonnage if it is not graduated by the tonnage of the boats or by the number of times they land within the State. Whether a charge is a charge of wharfage or a duty of tonnage must be determined by the terms of the regulation which imposes it. A "duty of tonnage" is a charge for the privilege of entering, or trading or lying in, a port or harbor; "wharfage," a charge for the use of a wharf. Whether the exaction is one or the other is a question of fact and law, and not of intent. See COMMERCE; WHARFAGE. Clifford, J.; Transportation Company v. Wheeling, 99 McKee v. Grand Rapids &c. R. Co., 41 Mich. 279 U. S. 284 (1878). (1879), Campbell, C. J. Lake Superior, &c. R. Co. v. United States, 93 U. S. 458-59 (1876), Miller, J. See also 29 Ohio St. 552; 12 Ct. Cl. 58; 22 E. L. & E. 526; 105 E. C. L. 60; 12 East, 340. • County Commissioners v. Chandler, 96 U. S. 208 (1877): Comyns' Digest. • Markets Company v. Neath, &c. R. Co., L. R., 7 С. Р. 566 (1872). See 1 N. Y. Rev. St. 609, § 35; 9 Paige, 188; 40 N. Y. 262; 29 Pa. 27; 3 Wall. Jr. 46. • See Act of Congress, 30 Aug. 1842, c. 270, s. 20. 'Roberts v. Opdyke, 40 N. Y. 262 (1869). • Inman Steamship Co. v. Tinker, 94 U. S. 243 (1876): R. S. § 4153. 1 [State Tonnage Tax Cases, ante. The North Cape, 6 Biss. 509-15 (1876), Blodgett, J. Inman Steamship Co. v. Tinker, 94 U. S. 243 (1876): R. S. § 4153. 4 Beck v. Phoenix Ins. Co., 16 Hun, 345 (1878). • Constitution, Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 3. Steamship Co. v. Portwardens, 6 Wall, 35 (1867). Cannon v. New Orleans, 20 Wall. 577 (1874); Peeter. Morgan, 19 id. 581 (1873). • Wiggins Ferry Co. v. East St. Louis, 107 U. S. 374, 376 (1882), cases; Transportation Co. v. Wheeling, 99 id. 273 (1878). • Transportation Co. v. Parkersburg, 107 U. S. 696 (1882), Bradley, J. See also Huse v. Glover, 119 id. 549 [State Tonnage Tax Cases, 12 Wall. 224-25, 204 (1870), (1886). ΤOΝΤΙΝΕ

TOMBn.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited; a grave; a sepulcher. As one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Shak. A house or vault, formed wholly or partly in the earth, with walls and a roof, for the reception of the dead. "In tomb of marble stones." Chaucer. A monument erected to inclose the body and preserve the name and memory of the dead. Hang her an epitaph upon her tomb. Shak. Tomb bat (Zoöl.), any one of species of Old World bats of the genus Taphozous which inhabit tombs, especially the Egyptian species (T. perforatus).

TOMBv.

Websters Unabridged Dictionary (1913) • 1913

To place in a tomb; to bury; to inter; to entomb. I tombed my brother that I might be blessed. Chapman.

tombnoun

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

Wiktionary contributors • CC BY-SA 4.0 • via Kaikki
Extracted and formatted for display by Law Mind. Source link opens the current Wiktionary page and its contributor history; it is not a frozen copy of this extract.

A small building, or a room within one, for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be partly or wholly in the ground (except for its entrance) in a cemetery, or it may be inside a church proper or in its crypt. Single tombs may be permanently sealed; those for families (or other groups) have doors for access whenever needed. | A pit in which the dead body of a human being is deposited. | One who keeps secrets. | Death (literary)

tombverb

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

To bury.

Tombname

Wiktionary (English) • 2026

A surname transferred from the given name.

Explore the full Law Mind legal research platform.

Subscribe Encyclopedia Sign In